On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 08:47, Glynn Clements wrote: > Josh wrote: > > > My question is: Since you are admins and > > deal with reading not only the man pages but tons of other texts every > > day, how do you motivate yourself to sit down and just read it all, even > > when reading for hours and sometimes going through dozens of code > > examples ?? > > For the most part, we don't. > > Anyone who is actually working as an admin generally has more urgent > things to do than read "bulk" documentation (e.g. tutorials). > > Mostly, you read enough initially so that you have a reasonable > overview as to how the parts fit together. The rest can wait until you > actually need it. > > It helps to know which programs do what, so you know which manual page > (and/or Info file or /usr/doc subdirectory) to read when dealing with > a specific issue, but you don't need to know the manuals off by heart. > > Realistically, you can't expect to learn every detail. In computing, > knowledge tends to become outdated faster than you can acquire it. And of course there's the whole "trial by fire" indoctrination that often gets mislabeled "learning by doing" or OJT, but is really just a frantic boss pulling hair and squealing "This has to be working again in 3 minutes or the world will stop turning, and if that happens I'll have your whole department trampled by rhinos!". You see, an ADMIN (sound of trumpets, averting of eyes, genuflection, etc) generally starts as a user just like you, Josh, somebody who is willing to feed themselves rather than be fed; somebody with a higher than average level of curiosity, and a desire to know what happens behind the scenes and how everything interrelates, who is then forced by circumstance to solve one crisis after another at figurative gunpoint. It's pretty much a case of reading whatever is required to understand and repair a problem so that you can choke down the next problem and so on and so on until one day you start seeing problems that you've dealt with before. The 3 greatest resources available during the crisis and the morph from user to admin, are man pages, lists like this and the usenet newsgroups. Oh, and any single thing about which you can become passionate, that has nothing at all to do with computers. If you can't find a place to "kick it" away from a keyboard, they will eventually medicate you against your will. Andy - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
